BCC looks to new program to ease remedial math frustrations

Monday

Feb 18, 2013 at 12:01 AMFeb 18, 2013 at 6:35 AM

The self-paced courses can speed the student along and into his or her "real" college work faster than traditional lectures can.

MATT CAMARA

FALL RIVER — Like many college students who find their way back to the classroom years after graduating high school, Alex Golden realized during his first semester that he could barely remember what an integer was, let alone what the rules to dividing one are.

"I brain-dumped most of that stuff" after finishing high school, the 25-year-old freshman at Bristol Community College said.

Now Golden spends hours each day relearning fractions, real numbers and a host of other math concepts he closed the books on in high school while taking a new, self-paced remedial math course aimed at getting students over a hurdle the majority of them face their first semester. The class allows students to compress up to three semesters of remedial work into one.

And Golden is not alone.

About 2,000 incoming students each year score poorly enough on BCC's placement exam to push them into development — or remedial — math courses in arithmetic and algebra, something that mirrors a nationwide trend. The remedial work can complicate students' plans, forcing them to put off classes they need to graduate because of math prerequisites, acting Vice President for Academic Affairs Greg Sethares said.

Statewide, 61 percent of incoming two-year college students need some remedial work and 45 percent of learners over 25 hit the "remediation dead end," meaning that they never finish the basic courses and often drop out in frustration, according to Complete College America, a nonprofit dedicated to improving college graduation rates.

The self-paced remedial courses, started last fall after two years of pilot programs, are aimed at getting students out more quickly, hopefully avoiding the dead end. Officials cautioned that the class is not for everyone, there is very little hand-holding and students need to be self-motivated, but it can speed the right person along and into his or her "real" college work faster than traditional lectures can.

"There is not one silver bullet that will solve the challenges of (students needing) development math, but this is one of many," said Sethares, who helped create the program.

The way the course works is simple. Students attend "class" in a computer lab several times a week to work on problems with an instructor on hand to answer any questions. Students only work on material they need because the system allows them to "pretest" out of topics — such as fractions, factoring, etc. — by scoring 75 percent. After passing the pretest, students can move on to another subject they do not know as well, said Elizabeth Donovan, BCC's developmental math coordinator.

The developmental math curriculum is divided into 12 modules. Four modules make up what would normally be a semester-long, three-credit math course.

But motivated students can push through the modules as fast as they want, possibly finishing them all in a single semester, with the added bonus that they only have to pay for the one term, said Mathematics Department Chairman Dan Avedikian.

The teacher, meanwhile, stays in class to answer questions, but no lectures are given.

"One role of the teacher in these classes is to keep the students on schedule, on pace," Avedikian said.

The self-paced classes grow each semester and are on track to become more than half of BCC's developmental math offerings, he added.

The college plans to continue offering traditional lecture courses alongside self-paced instruction, but officials expect the newer format to become dominant in the near future not only because of its effectiveness at teaching math, but also because it gives students confidence from doing the work independently.

"It's a good confidence boost," Donovan said. "A lot of times, it's not that they can't do it, it's that they lack confidence with math."